


Misunderstandings

by Codexfawkes



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: ASL, Darcy Lewis's Taser, Deaf Clint Barton, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-09 12:23:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10412085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Codexfawkes/pseuds/Codexfawkes
Summary: “Ferdinand and I have a very special relationship, he’s my first love, if my soulmate can’t deal too bad so sad,” she announced with a cheeky grin.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing. Any characters used from the Marvel universe and any quotes from anywhere are not mine. Joss is Boss.

Clint walked down the hall toward Tony’s workshop grinning to himself at the prospect of a new batch of custom arrows. Clint designed them, and Tony let him used Jarvis and the bots for fabrication. All in all this living in the tower thing they’d started doing when SHIELD disintegrated was working out pretty well. As he walked toward the shop Clint heard laughing feminine voices and looked around, spying Jane Foster and her assistant setting up in the empty lab space Tony had put together for her. He’d been very determined to get all the Avengers living in the tower and for Thor that meant accommodating his scientist lady love and her assistant. Clint had almost forgotten that they’d moved in over the week he’d been off with Nat dealing with some fall out shit and helping a couple agents who’s cover had gotten burned in the data dump.

Clint had never met the ladies, had only seen them from afar in New Mexico and then again when they’d come to Manhattan after the Chitauri battle to help with Selvig. Clint paused, watching them laugh together, and realized that Darcy’s picture in her SHIELD file really didn’t do her justice. Standing there in snug jeans, a worn tee, with her entire face lit up in mirth she was fucking gorgeous.

“I’m just saying, when you meet your soulmate you’re going to have to change your wild ways,” Jane told her with a teasing lilt to her voice. Darcy smirked and shook her head.

“Ferdinand and I have a very special relationship, he’s my first love, if my soulmate can’t deal too bad so sad,” she announced with a cheeky grin.

“Oh Darcy,” Jane cackled shaking her head at her friend. Clint pretty much agreed with her sentiment  as he continued walking. Part of him applauded Darcy for not letting fate tell her what to do with her life, who she had to love, but the rest of him felt really bad for her soulmate.

 

Two days later Clint walked into the communal kitchen and saw Darcy standing at the island moving cookies off a cookie sheet onto a big plate that was already piled high with chocolate chip cookies. He stopped in the doorway admiring the way her jeans hugged her curves, and the black tank top she had on showed the curve of her hips and narrowing of her waist to perfection. With her hair up in a messy bun, Clint could admire the swoop of her neck, the delicate lines of her shoulder blades, and after a second it hit him that he could see the black handwriting of her soulmark. Hand writing that was incredibly familiar, because it was his own. In seconds it felt like ice water was running through his veins as he suddenly realized the woman who didn’t want her soulmate because she was in love with another man was actually **_his_** soulmate. He must have made a noise of some kind because she turned and smiled at him.

“Oh hey, we haven’t met yet,  want some cookies?” Darcy asked gesturing to the overflowing plate in front of her. Clint froze as electricity shot through his body and his mark seemed to tingle and burn in acknowledgement. Still he forced himself to smile and nod, stepping closer to snag a couple warm chocolate chip cookie. “I’m Darcy, you probably knew that though,” she introduced grinning. Clint nodded again still smiling though at a loss of what to do. Realizing she was looking at him expectantly he had a flash of inspiration and quickly put the cookies down before signing at her.

“Hi, I’m Clint, sorry I’m not wearing my hearing aids,” he signed with an apologetic grin. Surprise flashed across her face before she smiled even wider and put the spatula down. Turning more fully toward him she signed back.

“A chance to brush up my ASL, I haven’t had anyone to sign with in years. So I guess you read lips?” she asked. Clint felt his heart clench painfully. Really? Really? The universe had to give him a gorgeous, brave, smart, woman who can sign **_and_** make her not want to be with him? Seriously?

“Yeah, I had to learn when I had my accident,” he signed back before gesturing to his ears. “Where did you learn to sign?” Clint wondered.

“My Nana was deaf, lost her hearing in WWII when she was in Birkenau. When she came to the US as a refugee she was able to learn sign language and taught my father and then me. Nana was a great lady, lived with us until she passed when I was 15,” Darcy explained with a wistful smile on her face. Clint felt surprise run through him again. He’d had no idea Darcy was Jewish, or that she had a relative that escaped one of the camps. He really didn’t know what to say to all that, so he nodded and picked up the cookies he’d taken before shoving one in his mouth. Darcy laughed at his moan of pleasure and teasingly admonished him not to eat them all before turning back to her task of transferring the last of the cookies to the plate.

 

After that it seemed like Darcy was everywhere. If Clint was going to the gym she was on a tread mill doing a light jog while she chatted with Pepper. If he went to the range she was sitting nearby watching Natasha teach Thor about Midgardian weaponry. If he went up to the roof, she and Foster were there using the telescope Tony had set up for them. If he went into the communal kitchen there she was making something tasty for them all. When he went to movie nights she was curled up on the end of the sofa right next to the chair he preferred. And fuck if he wasn’t falling for her with every encounter.

 She quickly decided that Clint chose not to wear his aids around the tower, something she declared was perfectly cool. So instead she went out of her way to make sure he could read her lips, or approach from the side so she didn’t surprise him. She made sure the subtitles were on during movie nights and always signed with him. She was smart, funny as hell, and every encounter was agony and ecstasy. If anyone thought it was odd that Clint suddenly wasn’t wearing his hearing aids at home, except he actually was he both loved and hated hearing her voice, and as a result wasn’t talking no one called him on it. Okay that wasn’t true, Nat did, but in private. She thought he was being an idiot, that he should just talk to Darcy, not pretend. Clint couldn’t help but disagree. He knew he’d have to speak to her eventually, hell he’d seen the words, he even knew what he was going to say. But he wasn’t really in a hurry to hasten her rejection.

Two months had passed and Clint was back where it had all started, walking toward Tony’s shop when he heard Darcy let out an unholy shriek of dismay from Jane’s lab.

“No!” she screamed as something fell heavily to the floor. Clint didn’t hesitate, simply reacting to the pained scream of the woman he was falling in love with and sprinted into the lab. What he found was chaos. Jane was sitting on top of the lab desk (her hair a rats nest of knots and pens, dark bags under her eyes and all the hallmarks of sleep deprivation) screwing something together of out what looked like a pile of spare parts. He could identify part of a cannibalized coffee maker, what looked like the insides of a radio, and a bunch of other stuff he wasn’t sure where they came from. Papers were strewn everywhere, and a box of paper stuffed binders had fallen to the floor, which was likely the cause of the crash he’d heard. Darcy however was standing in the middle of it all cradling some kind of electronic device that he was pretty sure had been a taser before Jane had taken it apart, glaring at her friend furiously with tears standing out in her eye.

“How could you?! You killed Ferdinand!” Darcy shouted angrily. Jane froze, finally looking at her friend with her eyes wide confusion. Shock and confusion shot through him, Ferdinand? Her first love was a…taser? Her love was not a man she was going to reject him for, but a fucking taser?

“Wait, what did you say?” Clint blurted out staring at her. He watched as she froze, clearly feeling her mark the same way he did hers. Darcy slowly turned toward him surprise and then hurt on her face when she realized it was him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked softly, hurt at his silence.

“I…I thought you didn’t want me,” Clint confessed.

“How…why would you possibly think that based off me offering you cookies?” Darcy asked baffled.

“No, it…it wasn’t that. Two days before we met I, well I heard you talking to Jane about how Ferdinand was your love and your soulmate would just have to deal with him being first. Then I saw my words on the back of your neck and realized that **I** was the poor schmuck that would always be second in your life. So I figured it was better to just…put off the inevitable rejection. Are you…is Ferdinand really your taser?” Clint asked hopefully. Darcy glanced down at the taken apart casing and bits of wiring Jane hadn’t used to make whatever the hell she was building.

“He was, now, now he’s gone. This guy saved me a bunch of times, even took down Thor once,” Darcy told him sadly before gently laying the pieces on her desk. ”Guess it’s a good thing my soulmate comes with weapons of his own,” she offered with a shy smile as she stepped closer.

“He also comes with quite a bit of baggage sweet heart, the bow case is just part of it. He’s kinda insecure sometimes, not sure he’s worth the trouble,” Clint told her apologetically.

“Clint,” Darcy started before she seemed to think better of it and hugged him. He automatically wrapped his arms around her and hugged back, a feeling of rightness sweeping over him. “I think you’re worth it,” she told him before pressing a soft kiss to his lips. Clint kissed her back, moving into her and swiping his tongue over her bottom lip, only to be startled apart by a loud snore from Jane. They turned and looked finding the scientist slumped over whatever she was building sound asleep. Darcy sighed and shook her head. “Jarvis, please tell Thor to come bring Jane to bed,” Darcy requested.

“Certainly Miss Lewis, Prince Thor is on his way,” Jarvis replied. Turning back to Clint Darcy looked him over with an assessing eye.

“What do you say to a late breakfast at the diner while we talk about all this?” she offered.

“Sounds good,” Clint agreed ducking his head with a smile.

“Good,” Darcy grinned before darting in for another quick kiss. A few minutes later as they walked down the street Clint felt a sense of contentment. His soulmate wasn’t rejecting him, Darcy wasn’t in love with another man. He had a shot, she seemed to actually like him. It wasn’t until they were sitting across from each other at the diner that Darcy turned a speculative look on him.

“I wonder why my mark is the first words you spoke, rather than the ones you signed? I mean my Nana met Poppa after she lost her hearing and her mark was the first words he signed to her,” Darcy said. Clint nodded, he knew other deaf people who had marks that were what their mate signed, or even symbols if that person didn’t know sign. No one really knew why marks worked the way they did, no matter what some people claimed.

“No idea, I guess maybe because I can speak and was choosing not to?” Clint suggested. Darcy nodded before a suspicious expression came over her face.

“Hey, have you been wearing your hearing aids this whole time?” she asked frowning at him. Clint ducked his head down with a contrite smile.

“Sorry, I just…didn’t want to hear you say you didn’t want me,” he confessed softly. Darcy melted in the face of his response, still he did lie to her.

“Okay, I can understand why you did it but you still lied to me for like two months. So I think you’re going to have to do something to make it up to me,” Darcy declared before sipping her coffee.

“Buy you a new taser?” he teased.

“Too soon,” Darcy said lightly kicking him. “No, I was thinking it’s been two months since I said your words so I think you owe me one orgasm for every week you lied,” Darcy proposed casually. A slow grin spread across his face as Darcy’s words sunk in.

“Sweetheart, it would be my genuine pleasure,” he agreed.

From that day on there was a rule between them, no more misunderstandings. They talked about whatever was on their minds, and if they had trouble saying it they signed it. So when after another two months Darcy was ready to let him start evening out that balance, well there were no more secrets between them. And she found out he was definitely telling the truth, Clint totally got off on making her come apart, so it was indeed his genuine pleasure.


End file.
